


Songs woven into our souls

by Catherines_Collections



Category: Firefly, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Dehumanization, Dream Magic, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Torture, Lobotomy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 09:01:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8243750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catherines_Collections/pseuds/Catherines_Collections
Summary: There’s a girl in her dreams who promises one day they will meet. She cannot wait until that day.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have had this for so long and i thought i would finally edit it a tad, and post it. I realize this is super underdeveloped but i don't realy have the voice for this story any more so this is it for now. I may revise or add on later but that's all up in the air.
> 
> I own nothing, i hope you all enjoy!:)

There’s a girl in her dreams who promises one day they will meet. She cannot wait until that day.

.

There’s a girl in her dreams with blonde hair and a wistful smile.

She says her name is Luna–dressed in robs and cloaked in misery and loneliness, who can form fire through words and summon lighting through a stick–and one day they will meet outside of her dreams.

Luna asks her name, and she continues to stare allowing their one-side conversation to lapse into silence. 

She has many reasons not to speak, and too many more for not giving her name. She knows now what names mean, the power they hold, and what they reveal about a person who openly shares them. She know now that names are power and that is something she has surrendered too much of in her lifetime. 

Fools, she thinks, only fools can permit such openness.

Luna’s eyes bear into her searching for something but she shows no sign of what she finds. Eventually Luna begins to speak again, no longer questions but reveals.

.

Luna tells of a world of wizards, weaves tales about a dark haired boy with a scar on his forehead and his circle of friends all destined to save the world. Luna tells her story with a fond smile painting her pink petal lips.

But there are still stories she doesn’t tell. Though they reveal themselves in the hastiness of her movements, the darkness smudged beneath her eyes, and the blackened edges tampering her bright light. 

Luna tells her stories and sometimes, rare and at unpredictable times, she tells hers. 

The day she speaks to Luna in her dreams comes after her first operation. Her eyes still twitch without her permission and everything feels dizzy and out of focus.

She tells Luna a short narrative of an old family vacation, taking pleasure in how the memory warms her where she had been cold before.  
Luna’s bright smile certainly adds to the newly found warmth.

.

She finds that after she begins to share she cannot bring herself to stop. So she tells.

Tells of Simon and summers spent on different planets together always making a mess, of endless libraries she spent days in, going so far as to move her bed inside.

She tells of broken promises and a family who thinks she’s studying, preparing her brain to be a benefit to society. She tells of surgeons and blue hands and the pain that always comes within the room. How ironic that her beloved brother wishes to one day become one of them. She laughs and it’s cruel and cold, and when she looks back at Luna her eyes are full of barley repressed fire. 

.

The pain comes–and it feels like it never stops, coming in the form of lies and deception, and blue hands that never stop touching and prodding, and don’t listen to screams and No’s and Stops-and the stories get harder to tell because they get harder to remember.

.

The dreams get quieter, somber, and hushed. 

In one dream they sit in a field buried deep within her memory where she and Simon had once played. Luna brushes her hair and hums quietly and suddenly she notices how tired Luna looks. How her shinning blonde hair has dulled along with the wonderous glint in her eyes. 

She wants to ask what’s wrong, what has befallen her wizard, but her stomach flips and she lacks the words. Luna leans infront of her and smiles softly at her like she can read her mind. She sighs quietly and begins to tell.

She speaks of unfinished battles and torture chambers, tells of locked rooms with screams echoing through and blood that never seems to come out of the floors no matter how hard they scrub.

She tells of fated heroes who never wanted to be who they are, of tired faces and wishes for homes that never were or will be. Maybe Luna cries and if she does she hides it well, in the sleeve of her sweater as wilted leaves fall from above them.

She stares at the silver brush set beside her, listens to the astonishing girl sitting behind her as she unleashes the suffering she has withheld, and wishes for flames.

.

She knows it won’t be long before one of them snaps–snaps in half in the most beautifully breathtaking ways that stops plants on their tilts. Hopefully the first will be merciful and sane enough to take the other with them, whether it is in death or renewal. The words go unspoken between them, a silent agreement much too cruel for words. 

.

The dreams become few and far between, and reality overstays its welcome. She spends her days staring into darkness, blue hands on her constantly and voice hoarse from the screams she doesn’t remember emitting. She prays to anyone who will listen, to once again see her blonde wizard and her kind smile. But all she sees are blue hands, and faces with eyes either too empty or too interested and they both make her just as sick.

It’s a sickness that doesn’t fade, haunting her drug induced sleeps and lurking around every corner, dwelling in the shadows.

.

Luna, she knows, has always known, is an ally. 

So when she reveals the essence of her being she does not condemn herself a fool, for there is trust buried in the revealing of her secret.  
She starts her voice as a whisper and escalates into shouts aimed towards the sky, not stopping even when she begins to tastes blood; not until all that comes out are hoarse words faintly dragging their way into existence.

She tells her - the magical girl, her wizard - because she knows she will forget. So she tells her, weaves the syllables of a language long forgotten, and places them into a mind she trusts more than her own. The pain written across Luna’s face at the revelation of her secret tells her she knows what is to come and so they both cry until they can’t, and when the hollow feeling comes she kisses her wizard on the cheek. Takes her head into her hands and bestows a blessing upon her.

They part and her wizard promises it’s not forever, smiling so prettily with sorrow etched in around the corners because they are both so young and headed off to war. Separate wars they are not likely to come back from, much less win. Nevertheless she smiles because it is a thought she cannot bear.

Luna promises they will meet out of her dreams. Tells of wizard devices and magic and spells that can alter time and place. She hugs the wizard to her chest and Luna laughs like the sun shines. Her secret hanging between them like an anchor and the promise made with it a bridge.

River kisses her hand, holding onto the promise like a prayer and promising to continue her grasp until the fated day she no longer can.

.

Its seven days after the last dream that sleep itself becomes a dream. Constantly torn between training and other essentials, that when sleep does arrive to her it is dark and deep and much too heavy. 

Sleeping, she figures, is supposed to feel lighter. Less like a dread and more like a temptress.

She drifts into darkness before she can fully examine her thoughts. 

.

River, she had told Luna marveling at how long it has been since she last heard her name instead of a jumble of random numbers in its place, call me River and please don’t forget.

She watches as her wizard tests the name on her lips, silent and woeful. Tear tracks plague Luna’s cheeks and she takes great care in wiping them from existence.

.

Luna isn’t the one who forgets.

.

They play with her mind, the men and women dressed in white with hands adorn in blue, take it apart and put it back together again and again. Just not as good, never as good.

They take pleasure in putting her under and taking out bits and pieces. Because they desire, she learns, and so they take. They take until she snarls and bites two fingers off of a doctor. They take until she is feral and forgetful of everything but the fear and anger that ground her. They take until she is unsure what has been taken and the smiles they wear make her want to bathe in red.

She becomes a shell torn between madness and rage, but somehow never allowing the two to mix. There’s an uneasy feeling that comes with the mixture, so she tucks it away for later.

.

Events happen out of place in the best of ways. Its change and she would cry from sheer joy if she still knew how.

She is freed from the sadist and demons, free from the prodding and pokes. Her brother saves her like the knight he is. Gives up his future to save his shell of a sister. She wants to write poems about the moment she thinks, but she never will. The memory, when she revisits it, is damp and dim and blurry around the edges. She will ask Simon about the escape later and he will tell her that they escape the facility, and arrive aboard a cargo ship named Serenity, at which she will nod. And they meet a crew not to friendly but not too cruel, and Simon earns them a spot aboard the ship.

Later he tells her, that she loved looking out of her bedroom window at first. She would watch empty space and stars born and die before her eyes. He will tell her she called it bliss. She will not tell him that this is the part she remembers. She does not tell him that he forgot the crucial sometimes.

Sometimes, it is bliss.

Other times it’s haunting. There are shadows on the wall, in the window, in space that remind her of something that she can’t place, and she racks what’s left of her brain for answers when it happens.

Images burned into her soul come back in flashes and she begins to claw her eyes shut and scream until her lungs give out but the flashes of blue don’t leave. Footsteps run and run, flashbacks continue and the medicine prescription double and triple along with the strange looks from the crew.

The sometimes, she thinks, is a very important detail.

.

She tries harder to adjust to the people around her, not to let her mind blank and eyes close as often. She takes all her pills and tries to link faces to names. She holds in the shouts and tries to repress the whispers in her mind, blocks the memories and the thoughts of red. 

Sometimes she’ll realize she’s talking, murmuring under her breath, in rhymes that make little or no sense to her and the crew. Simon runs his fingers through her hair and promises it will be alright.

He increases her dosage.

She stops trying to remember the shadows.

.

She doesn’t dream anymore, but she can’t exactly remember the last time she had. 

A small sacrifice for the sense of normality that comes with drowsiness, Mal quips and Kaylee giggles. Wash ruffles her hair and pretends she hadn’t attempted to stab him before, sighing about how now she must suffer eternal exhaustion like every other person on the ship. Zoe just rolls her eyes in exasperation on account of her husband. Shepherd and Inara both spare her kind, watchful smiles. Jayne doesn’t contribute, just watches from the corner. She makes the effort to smirk at him; it makes her feel better when he squirms.

Later Simon explains the pills prevent dreaming as a side effect, and his eyes shine like it’s a good thing and progress is being made; and maybe it is, maybe she’s too broken to remember what a good thing looks like or she’s too tired to see the progress. He looks hopeful and she doesn’t want to tell him, to erase the hope in his eyes for her, that the creatures who once haunted her dreams have found other ways into her mind. 

So she nods and hangs onto every word he says.

Later she’ll notice dried droplets on her face and with a hesitant touch to her cheek she’ll wonder when they got there.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed:) Comments and Kudos are much appreciated!


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